


Buyer Beware

by MaraMcGregor



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Ghost Bitty, Haunted Houses, Homophobia, ghost character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 10:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12555868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaraMcGregor/pseuds/MaraMcGregor
Summary: Written for OMCPumpkins fest.Prompt: Bitty is an angry/vengeful spiritwho was murderedin a house that Jack moves into.Bitty didn't survive that night in the closet in 7th grade. He's been haunting his old childhood home ever since. Jack moves in after being traded to the Atlanta Thrashers, completely unaware of the history of the house.





	Buyer Beware

Jack sighed as he inspected the house. It was cute. The realtor described it as “straight out of Southern Living”. He couldn’t have cared less. It came furnished and was far enough outside of the Atlanta area that he could almost guarantee his privacy. He had taken the trade from the Falconers to the Thrashers with as much grace as he could muster, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow. Georgia was a football state and the hockey team was suffering for it. They traded for him in the hopes of bringing star power and salvaging the team. The only good thing Jack could see about the entire situation was that he was able to afford good housing in an area where no one would know his name.

He was concerned when the realtor showed him the price tag for the house. He assured her that he could afford much more than the list price and that maybe they should be looking for something with a wrought iron fence around it. She assured him that it was just that the housing slump hadn’t really recovered in the area and that it was a perfectly nice house. And it was. Cozy, comfortable, plenty of rooms, and plenty of yard for him to get a dog or host cook outs for the team.

Jack dropped his duffel just inside the front door and looked around. Dust drifted through the sunbeam coming through the kitchen window. The hardwood floors creaked under his feet as he wandered around the main floor. There was no TV, yet. Sofas and comfortable chairs sat in the living room, making it clear where one had once sat. He’d need to order one so that he could watch tape. He’d probably call whatever the local cable provider was so that he could at least have access to the Documentary Channel.

He contemplated finding the local grocery store and stocking the fridge, but he just didn’t have the energy in him. He hung his keys on the cute wall mounted organizer by the door and trudged up the stairs. He opened the door to the first bedroom he came to and sighed in relief when he saw that the bed was present and had sheets on it. Jack assumed it was for showing the house and making it look lived in. He spared a brief glance around as he kicked his shoes off and thought it slightly odd that the room would be decorated for a figure skater and not a football player, but shrugged and figured the realtor had to know what she was doing.

Hours later, Jack rolled out of bed and noticed that the sun was starting to set. Groaning, he forced himself up and convinced himself that he should at least stock the fridge with the bare necessities. He pulled his shoes back on and wandered back down the stairs and reached for his keys - which weren’t there. He paused and gazed at the hook that he could have sworn he had hung his keys on. He patted his body down out of habit, making sure he hadn’t actually just stuffed them in one of his pockets. Jack spun, looking at the ground, it was ridiculous and illogical, but maybe they fell? And that’s when he spotted them, sitting neatly on top of his duffel, as if he had left them there the entire time. Jack shook himself and grabbed the keys, mumbling to himself about losing his head if it wasn’t screwed on.

* * *

Jack did not believe in ghosts. Jack did not believe in the supernatural. The closest he got was pre-game superstition and a healthy dose of respect for Cup magic. But, either he was being spectacularly forgetful, or his house was haunted. It was just little things, things that made him scratch his head in confusion and question himself. When his personal items arrived, he took the time to organize them just so. He had a specific way he liked his game tapes organized and a specific way he liked to keep his books. So finding his recent purchase of _The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II_ stuck behind several American Civil War books that had come with the house was incredibly unusual. He spent the evening tearing apart the bookshelves and inspecting them for any tricks or uneven shelves. Then, just to be sure, he reorganized every book in the house. When he came down the stairs the next morning, every single book was back exactly where it had been before his 10 hour organizing spree.

He had to admit, that one made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He talked about it to his new teammates during training camp. He didn’t technically have to be in so early, but he wanted to get a feel for the guys he’d be playing with and see what they were working with for prospects. He was met with laughter and a few sympathetic looks. The assistant GM patted him on the back and assured him that “damn near everything in this state is haunted” and that he should ask around town to see if there was a history on the house and maybe to “buy a separate bookshelf for your books and leave theirs the way they like them”. That was distinctly discomfiting.

So, Jack made the effort to go to the Saturday farmer’s market and ask around. Reporters had nothing on these ladies. Sweet and sugar nice and nosier than a beat reporter who smelled a scandal. He smiled and nodded at their questions and tried to get a few of his own in. Finally, he had a break with someone who had to be on the upper end of 90.

“I haven’t seen you before, dear.”

“Yes, ma’am. I just moved to the area last month.”

“Well, you can just call me Mrs. Hart. Are you settling in okay? Nothing too drastically different from what you’re used to, is it?” She gave him a suggestive look that made it abundantly clear what she was really asking.

“The weather’s pretty different from Montreal, but I’ve been assured that I’ll grow used to it.”

Mrs. Hart patted him on the arm. “If you stay long enough, I’m sure you’ll get adjusted just fine. Now, where did you choose to settle down? Some nice bachelor pad? Or has some young lady already managed to tie you down?”

Jack gave her a forced smile. “Still quite single, I’m afraid. But, I wanted something with a yard and room to have friends over. Something with some space and privacy.” Jack continued when Mrs. Hart looked at him with a pointed eyebrow. “I bought the place off Old Mill Road.”

Something passed over Mrs. Hart’s face. She plastered on a clearly forced smile and managed to keep a vague impression of cheer in her voice. “And how’s that working out for you, dear?”

“Well, it’s very nice. It came fully furnished. I just had to buy a TV and a couple of odds and ends.”

“And everything is okay?”

Jack nodded. “Sure. I mean, there’s some quirks about the house that I have to get used to, but I’m sure that comes with every house.”

“Quirks?” Her voice lilted into a deliberately polite question.

“Just odd things. The jam I bought last week found a new home for itself in the back of the fridge instead of the door, where I could have sworn that I put it. My keys keep falling off the hooks by the door. And I swear that my history books keep getting rearranged while I’m asleep. I mean, if I believed in things like that, I’d think it was haunted.”

“You don’t say.” Her voice trembled ever so slightly.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the house, would you?”

Mrs. Hart looked down and fiddled with her purse. “I’m not really one to spread rumors. And it’s such a tragic story -”

Jack gave her his best soulful look and let his eyebrows drop to what his parents called his worried-about-the-universe face. “Tragic?”

“The high school football coach and his family lived there. Their son, sweet little thing - really, died. He was found in the janitor’s closet, beat and left there over the weekend. They couldn’t be sure exactly what cause of death was. Probably a combination of trauma and dehydration. They suspected it was members of the football team, but there just wasn’t enough evidence.”

Jack was horrified. “So the football team killed their coach’s kid?”

Mrs. Hart hemmed and hawed a bit before getting to what she considered the juicier part of the story. “Coach Bittle’s son wasn’t exactly football material. He was into _figure skating._ He was much more of a delicate soul, loved his mama and his MooMaw. His apple pie won first place at the county fair the last two years before he died.”

“I don’t understand.” He knew he was missing something crucial in what she was hinting at. Something was getting lost in either language or cultural translation, maybe both.

Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper and she leaned in close. “Well, it was rumored that the was - you know - one of those _homosexuals_.”

Jack instinctively reared back. The tone she used reminded him all too clearly of the worst of the NHL and the Juniors. A brief flare of panic had him questioning himself and if she somehow might know about _him_. Then, horror filled him at the thought that the entity haunting his house may be a boy dead from a hate-crime.

Mrs. Hart continued on, but Jack didn’t hear a word she said, a low buzzing taking the place of her voice. He smiled as best he could and made his excuses. He fled back to his house and closed the door behind him, feeling safer with a ghost than the community outside the house’s four walls.

* * *

The activity stayed relatively mild. Jack made sure not to change too much in the house around. He quickly learned that if he bought Smuckers jelly for his PB&Js that it wouldn’t survive the night; but, if he bought it from Judy Phelps at the farmer’s market the jam stayed safely in the door shelf. However, he only made the mistake of bringing back Candice Reed’s apple butter once. He had placed it in the cupboard, turned around to grab the vegetables out of his bag when he heard something shatter. The jar with the apple butter had escaped the cupboard and landed at his feet. Jack had to carefully step around the mess to grab the dustpan and paper towels. It wouldn’t have been too bad, except that he didn’t follow up the cleaning with a thorough mopping and he found ants in the kitchen the next day where apple butter had gotten in the grout.

Jack also realized some time in his third week that if he wanted a full night’s sleep, he had to move to the master bedroom. There was something about Eric’s room that drew him in. It was reminiscent of his own childhood bedroom, in some ways, full of medals to commemorate his achievements, posters of his idols, the skates neatly stored next to the nightstand. But at night, that was a different story.

At night, the peaceful room turned into a living nightmare. Footsteps would echo down the hallway and pace in the room. He had been okay with that the first few times, mostly because it didn’t happen every night. But on one particular night it seemed to escalate for no apparent reason. He had fallen face first into the bed after his shower and started dozing when he heard rattling. Groggy, he ran his hand over his face and tried to get the dried crust out of his eyes. He peered through the darkness, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from, but couldn’t seem to find the source. When he turned on the light, everything stopped. Not having the energy to deal with it, he turned the light back off and collapsed back into the pillows.

Jack had barely started to drift back off when he felt the bed dip beside him and a cold sensation ran down his spine. Jack’s eyes popped open and he shot from the bed. He could clearly see the indentation of what looked like a body on the side of the bed he hadn’t been occupying. That was officially enough for him to drag his still partially packed suitcase down to the end of the hallway to the master bedroom. He grabbed a comforter from the linen closet and a spare pillow and spent the rest of the night on the floor. That was the next thing to order, a bed to sleep in that didn’t have a ghost attached to it.

* * *

The new bed was nice. He had almost allowed himself to be talked into one of the fancy beds that had motorized feet and head inclines. It was still exceptionally tempting. If he got injured, having the ability to raise his leg or recline in a sitting position would be ideal. That being said, Jack wasn’t convinced that the franchise would last long enough for that to be an issue for him.

He had gotten into a routine of general avoidance when it came to his “house guest”. He stayed away from that bedroom, only bought the items that wouldn’t get destroyed, and kept most of the furniture where he had found it. The new bookshelf had been left alone and he organized that one to his heart’s content. Every other book remained exactly how Jack had found it when he first moved in, or rather when it had been put back to it’s original arrangement.

So, given how - finicky - his ghost was, he figured that when the team wanted to come over for a cookout, it would be safest if he limited it to the outside and the kitchen. Minimal interference inside the house would hopefully translate to a minimally disturbed ghost.

Jack thought it went relatively well. He wasn’t exactly known for his sociability, but all things considered, his new teammates seemed to have fun and even took over the grilling when it was clear that he was a little out of his depth when it came to the more Southern style of cookout.

A couple of the guys needed directions to the bathroom, as was to be expected when beer was involved. Jack made sure to tell them how to get to the first floor bathroom, only. He did not need to know what would happen if they invaded the upstairs hall bathroom. Jack kept an ear out for any unexplainable noises or distressed shouts from his teammates. Pleasantly, everything stayed quiet and he was able to call his first cookout with his new team a success. It wasn’t the most comfortable situation for him, but social situations never were to begin with.

He waved as the captain and his wife rolled out of his driveway. They were the last to leave and helped him clean up the yard. Jack insisted that he was fine to clean up the kitchen on his own. They had left the typical mess in their wake, but it had nothing on the disaster areas he grew accustomed to while living in the Haus at Samwell.

Jack set about cleaning up the kitchen when a pan rattled off the rack behind him and crashed into the wall by his head. He ducked and covered as more pans fell. Trash started flying in his general vicinity.

“ _Merde!_ ”

Jack stumbled out of the kitchen, half crawling, half running. A solo cup, still full of beer crashed into the door frame, splattering him with it. He tore up the stairs and shut himself in the bathroom, straining to hear when the mayhem in the kitchen stopped.

Time passed slowly. He felt like he had entered some bizarre, alternate dimension with how long it took for the minutes to pass and the house to return to relative calm. He pressed his hand to his chest and tried to calm his racing heart. He gave himself a pep talk in French, trying to psych himself up to moving from his spot in the corner of the bathroom. “ _Okay, Jack, you can do this. Just, stand up, get these clothes off and take a shower._ ”

Nothing awful happened while he was getting clean. The warm water stayed warm and helped soothe his nerves. He let himself linger under the spray, taking the time to enjoy his moment of peace. He breathed deeply in the steam, letting every muscle relax. He stepped out of the shower once he had fully calmed down and resolved to clean up the kitchen in the morning.

He grabbed his towel off the rack and rubbed himself down. He had just pulled on his pajama bottoms when he heard a thumping coming from the stairwell. It was loud, and progressing from the first floor up the stairs. Jack stood stock still, listening as the thumping continued down the hallway and stopped part way down.

Jack forced himself to take steady breaths before he opened the door to the bathroom and looked out into the hallway. It was empty, as he knew it would be. But, the pictures that hung on the walls had fallen to the ground. Jack walked towards them and realized that they stopped outside of Eric’s room. Cautiously, he picked up the closest one and hung it back on the nail it had fallen from. It was a picture of Eric when he was about 3 on a swing being pushed by his father. Jack continued down the hallway, picking up the pictures that had fallen and putting them back on the wall. Each one was a memorial to Eric’s childhood, blissful family moments captured for eternity.

Jack continued down the staircase and carefully put everything to rights. He glanced back up the stairs when he reached the first floor and could have sworn that he heard soft sobbing coming from Eric’s room. He sighed and figured he might as well clean up the kitchen while he was downstairs and the spirit was upstairs. As he mopped up the spilled beer, he tried to figure out what caused such a massive escalation and change in activity. By all accounts, Eric was a gentle person in life.

It took a couple of hours to finish the dishes and put every last thing away, but by the time the house was put back to rights, he had decided to just ask what had happened and see where that got him. He peered up the stairs and listened, but everything was still. He took the stairs one at a time and stopped outside of Eric’s old room. He felt silly, but knocked on the door anyway.

Jack dawdled a bit before asking, “Is it okay if I come in?”

As expected, he didn’t receive an answer. He took a deep breath and turned the knob. The door creaked open. Jack peered around, half-anticipating to have his head nearly taken off again by a flying object. It was eerily calm. The hair on his body raised as if he was being exposed to static electricity from every angle.

“H - hello?” Jack’s breath visibly puffed in front of him. He wrapped his arms around himself as the temperature dropped.

Something flickered on the edge of his vision. Jack swiveled his head in time to catch the barest outline of a boy before it glitched out. << _Just … like … the rest_ >>

The knick-knacks on the nightstand rattled before toppling over.

“I don’t understand. What rest?”

<< _Did … this … to me! >> _

“I swear, I’d never hurt you.” Jack spun in place, trying desperately to see who he was speaking to. “I heard what happened. It was awful, and I get that you’re angry, but I’d never do anything like that. Ever!”

<< _LIES_ >>

“It’s not! Did something happen? I thought everything was going alright. Why are you doing this?”

Jack didn’t get a verbal answer. A poster of Johnny Weir in his Swan Lake costume flew at him from a spot on the floor on the other side of the bed. It was crumpled and damaged around the corners. Jack glanced at the wall that he knew it hung on and saw the ripped pieces still stuck where the tacks held them. “Did someone take this down?” Jack hesitated when he got no further response. “They weren’t supposed to come up here. I told them to use the downstairs bathroom. If someone was up here -”

<< _GET OUT_ >>

The door behind Jack flew open, the handle barely missing the small of his back. Jack got the message and ducked out of the room. He watched in mute horror as the image of the boy came back stronger, his head seemed like it was on crooked and his arms and legs were at odd angles. The closet door opened and shut and the screaming began again.

Jack shut the door to Eric’s room and speed walked to the master bedroom. He knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night.

* * *

Something had to stop the madness. Jack was at his wit's end. And he didn’t want to give up the house. Giving up living there felt like giving up on the boy who was so terrified in his final moments that he stayed when he should have gone. Jack couldn’t give up on him. He could have been the same if Kent hadn’t found him unconscious on that bathroom floor, his soul stuck, terrified, and angry at the world.

So, he did the only thing left he could think of and looked up the current residence of the Bittles in the hope that they would talk to him.

He stood outside the apartment complex in downtown Atlanta and shifted from foot to foot. He wished he had built a report with his new team like he had developed with the Falcs. Maybe then he would have felt comfortable asking one of them to come with him. But, considering it seemed like one of them was the one to set Eric off, he figured that maybe he was better off alone after all. Jack inhaled deeply and forced his nerves down as far as he could. He stepped up to the intercom system and buzzed apartment 43B.

A soft, feminine voice came over the intercom, “Hello?”

“Yes. Hello. Um, you don’t know me, but I bought your old house and .... I had some questions.” When he was met with nothing but silence, he stumbled on, “I mean, if it’s too hard, I understand. But, I’ve been having some … problems.”

The door lock clicked. “You’d best come up.”

Jack focused on keeping his breathing controlled as he rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. The door to apartment 4B was open and a small woman with blonde hair and large brown eyes stood in the doorway. She put on a smile, but it was clear that it was strained.

“Well, I never thought the son of Bad Bob Zimmermann would be the one to buy our house. You look so much like him. But, I’m sure you hear that all the time.”

The silence stretched on, Jack tried to put on a smile, but it felt even more out of place than usual. Mrs. Bittle had lines around her eyes. They had probably once been laugh lines, but had long since taken on a more somber turn. He looked past her and saw her husband. He stood and offered his hand. Jack couldn’t help but notice the differences between this man and the one in the pictures that hung on the stairwell. This man seemed to have aged poorly, his skin was waxy and had a sallow undertone. The cheerful grin was long gone, replaced by downturned lips and a glassy look in his eyes.

“You’ve been there awhile now, right? We had hoped that if we moved out, that he might,” Suzanne swallowed trying to move past the tears, “move on.”

Jack looked between the two of them. “Why would you leaving have anything to do with how he is?”

Coach glared down at his hands. “Because he blames me for what happened to him.”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “ _Why?_ ”

“Because I never did anything to stop it. I was the football coach. I should have stepped in when I heard their attitudes in the locker room. It was my responsibility to stop such behavior. I should have been supportive of - of _Eric_. Instead of pushing him into being what I thought a man should behave like, I should have just loved him and told him that I did. His death -” Coach covered his face with his hands, “it’s my fault. I could have stopped it. Or I could have at least given him the knowledge that he was safe at home. And I didn’t!” Coach broke off into ugly, choking sobs.

Jack was at a loss. Suzanne wrapped an arm around her husband, but didn’t make a move to correct his statement. He suddenly had an extreme appreciation for what his father must have felt when he was barely hanging on to life. He knew his dad blamed himself, but if he had died, that blame would have torn him apart. “As much as you might have had a part in it, from what I’ve heard, there’s a lot of people that deserve as much blame, if not more. The boys that did it, their parents, the whole corrupt system that protected the boys from justice … there’s nothing we can do about that now. But, maybe we can make him less angry. Let him see that you _do_ love him. And maybe we can remind him that no one can hurt him now.” Jack scooted forward to the edge of his seat and rested one hand on Coach’s knee and the other on Suzanne’s. “I don’t mind sharing the house with him. It was his first. I just don’t want to get bashed over the head with a cast iron pan.”

Coach chuckled wetly. “I don’t know if I can do any good with that. I certainly wasn’t able to when he was alive.”

Jack gave him a small smile that he hoped was encouraging. “I think you might be able to reach him where other people can’t.”

* * *

Jack was the first to enter the house. The Bittles trailed cautiously behind him. They barely made it into the foyer when the temperature dropped drastically. The three instinctively inched closer together. Jack had that weird static feeling again and all the hair on his body started to stand on end. He noticed Suzanne rubbing her arms out of the corner of his eye, undoubtedly trying to settle her goosebumps.

The AC cut on and off with an audible bang, making the Bittles and Jack jump. That strange outline started to appear again, just as the AC died. Coach sucked in air between his teeth. But Suzanne stepped forward, “Baby?”

The temperature continued to drop and the figure became more distinct. Jack could see silvery trails running down his scalp. His right arm was at that odd angle; but now, Jack was able to make out that it had been broken. They started shivering as the image became clearer. It wasn’t Eric’s leg itself that was oddly placed, it was his ankle, causing that odd posture and leg position. But the thing Jack mostly took in, was how tiny he was. From the stories he had heard, Eric had to be around 13, but this kid barely looked 10 he was so small.

<< _STAY AWAY_ >>

“Baby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t pay attention to you the way I should have. If I had, I would have known how much danger you were in.” Suzanne stepped forward again, coming within a couple of feet of the translucent figure.

<< _... Hate ... me_ >>

Coach choked on a sob. “No, Junior. We could never hate you. You are our son.”

A strange crackling sound emanated from around them, likely a poorly tuned radio had turned on. They could barely make out the words, but it was clear who the voices belonged to. <<I just don’t get it Suzy. How could anyone choose to live their life like that?”>>

<<Pastor Jim says that you just have to keep praying for them. And sometimes a bit of tough love is what is required to bring them back on track.>>

<<Do you think ->>

<<No. Dicky’s just fine-boned. There’s plenty of figure skaters that go on to have successful marriages. Just look at that Scott Hamilton.>>

Coach shook his head. “We were wrong, and stupid. _I_ was wrong and stupid. I didn’t want to recognize the violence of those boys. I buried my head in the sand and let them go on. This is my fault. If I had stepped in - if I had said something -” Coach fell to his knees, still slightly behind Jack and closest to the door. “God, I am _so sorry_. I wish it had been me! I wish this hadn’t happened to you. Junior -” Coach bent his head low and sobbed openly.

Suzanne raised a hand as if to stroke Eric’s battered face. “Dicky -” She was cut off by a cold blast of air.

<< _And you?_ >> Eric’s empty eyes bore straight into Jack’s soul.

“I’d be a massive hypocrite.” Jack chuckled lowly to himself. “I could have been you. I almost _was_ you. If it wasn’t for my ex-boyfriend finding me on the bathroom floor and calling for an ambulance -” He snorted to himself. “Somehow, I survived. And no, I’m not out to this team. I was to some of the guys on the Falcs. Until I figure out if this is going to be a permanent move or if I’m going to be traded again, I don’t intend to come out. I am well aware of the hazards.”

Suzanne and Coach looked stunned. They had not anticipated finding out that Bob Zimmermann’s son wasn’t straight, but something in the air shifted. Everything hung in the balance.

Coach pulled himself together and pushed off the floor. “Son, I’m glad you’re here. I can’t imagine what you went through - what you are going through. But, I know that we wouldn’t have had the courage to come back here without you.”

The air lightened and started to warm up. As they watched, Eric’s image started to shift. The blood trails vanished, his arm went back into place, his posture straightened when his ankle moved back to where it was supposed to be.

“Oh, sweetheart!”

<< _I’m so sorry, Mama. I was just SO angry. And so scared._ >>

“You have nothing to apologize for, Junior. This is on us. Us and this backwater town.”

<< _Daddy_ >>

Jack hummed to himself. “I can move out, if you want. I understand if you would want to be close.”

Coach shook his head. “No. Absolutely not, son. You belong here. Just, maybe if you wouldn’t mind if Suzy and I visit every once in awhile.”

“Of course, sir.” Jack smiled softly at the Bittles. The air conditioner snapped back on and the atmosphere grew lighter. Eric’s figure became soft at the edges.

<< _I love you_ >>

“We love you too, son.” Coach draped an arm around Suzanne.

“Forever and always, baby.”

Eric faded with a soft, yellow glow.


End file.
